Tag: <span>Travel</span>

Adventures

Ocean Swims and Jellyfish Stings

After two months of travelling, and not having had yet been to a beach I was eager to get down to the south of Cambodia and visit some of those beaches.

But I hated Sihanoukville. It was raining basically the entire time I was there and the beach down there was so incredibly dirty. It was a bit of a reality check discovering this after hearing so many wonderful things about the beaches in Cambodia and seeing so many incredible photos. Every morning I woke up it was grey and raining, so I didn’t even make it out to any of the islands. Honestly though, what is the point of going to an island for a day when it’s just raining the whole time?

After two days in Sihanoukville, I decided to head East to Ream National Park. And here it was: a small piece of paradise. I stayed at the Monkey Maya in a 16-bedroom dorm with mosquito nets covering the bunk beds and the sound of the ocean lulling me to sleep every night. The hostel/ resort is located on a private beach with beautiful (and clean) white sand surrounded by the Cambodian jungle.

It was stunning here. And peaceful.

Being off season, there weren’t many people at the Monkey Maya, which made it all that more relaxing. It was a nice spot to just not do anything other than read and snooze in some of the hammocks.

The area is also known for plankton. I’ve never seen plankton before so needless to say I was in awe. It looks like stars have fallen from the sky, getting trapped in the ocean and lighting up beneath the surface of the water with your every touch. Their fluorescent blue twinkling on the waves beneath the inky black sky.

My last night at the Monkey Maya, there was small but solid crew of people and, after a few shots of whiskey, swimming in the ocean to see the plankton was agreed upon. A few of us didn’t have the foresight to put on our bathers so we just stripped down naked and ran in.

This night, the plankton was even brighter and more magical than the previous night. It was darker and we swam further out and, being naked, it was surreal to watch my body shimmering blue with every move under the water. The waves crashed loudly around us, bringing a sparkling plankton filled foam with it. We could only really tell where one another was in the water from the dark, shadowy human forms that were surrounded by the faint blue glowing plankton.

After about thirty minutes of twirling and kicking and splashing to watch the plankton, two figures hurriedly exited the water, their little white bums shining out through the darkness.

It’s not just plankton in the water but jellyfish too. One of those little white bums had the unfortunate pleasure of being stung by one… On the tip of his manhood.

The poor guys spent the res of the night with his dick wrapped in a cloth of vinegar, trying to soak out the stung while his friends stayed awake with him in case he had a reaction.

I hope he can laugh about it now.

Adventures

A Day at The Killing Fields and S-21

I didn’t do much planning or research before heading to Cambodia. All I knew was that I wanted to volunteer for a week at the Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary and, of course, visit Angkor Wat.

What I didn’t plan for was the Killing Fields or S-21. This mostly came from my own ignorance and not researching or reading into Cambodia and the history of the country before arriving.

Beaches and Angkor Wat, right? I was completely unaware of the country’s dark and recent tragic history. We didn’t learn anything about Cambodia in the school back home [in Canada]. It’s just not included in our history classes.

It wasn’t until one of the volunteers I was working with at the Cambodia Wildlife Sacntuary mentioned the Killing Fields and how I needed to include it in my trip that I added it to my itinerary.

She was absolutely right. The Killing Fields and S-21 is an incredibly important visit to make. It was a horrific and difficult day, learning about this dark past of Cambodia, that left me in tears. I think the most shocking thing to me though was the fact that I did not know this had happened. It wasn’t even that long ago – 1973.

For those of you who don’t know about the Killing Fields and S-21, they are essentially memorials for the mass genocide that occurred in Cambodia in the early 1970s.

According to the audio tapes I listened to in S-21, while the world was focussed on the War in Vietnam, there was a secret war being waged in Cambodia. More than 110,000 tons, or more than 2 million bombs were dropped on Cambodia during this time. Still to this day, Cambodia remains the heaviest land mined country in the world.

So when the Khmer Rouge Regime marched in to Siem Reap, the people were happy to see them. They thought this meant freedom and an end to the bombings. The terror was just beginning though as Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge Regime had extreme communist views, forced everyone out from the cities into the outlying villages, and then forced them one again even further out. He demanded rice production be increased to a number that was simply not attainable but had people working themselves to death.

Anyone intellectual was viewed as a threat to him – if you wore glasses you were screwed as this was viewed as a sign of intelligence. Pol Pot questioned and tortured thousands and thousands of people, including his own army generals when he felt threatened by them, leading to the execution of more than 1/4 of the population.

The Killing Fields and S-21 are set up in an informative and impactful way.

I started the day at S-21, one of many schools turned prisons during the Khmer Rouge Regime. With the entry ticket, you are given a headset that guides you through the prison, recounting what happened there and teaching visitors about the Khmer Rouge Regime. It’s a sobering walk through the buildings, seeing the different torture tools that were used on the prisoners and the horrendous conditions in which they were kept.

It was a school and it very much looks like it once was a school, making it all the more chilling because you can practically hear the sounds of children bantering in the classrooms while you learn that barbed wire was strung up across the balconies to prevent prisoner’s attempting to jump to their death.

S-21 was a good spot to start the day as the tour here gave a lot of background information on the Khmer Rouge Regime, as well as included personal stories of survivors and testimonies from members currently on trial for their crimes against humanity.

From S-21 I went over to The Killing Fields. The Killing Fields is known for its five-storey high memorial to the victims of the Khmer Rouge made from skulls that have resurfaced from these mass graves during rainy season.

Still to this day, during rainy season, bones of people murdered at Pol Pot’s orders are turning up as the heavy rains push the bones up from below.

The tapes here walk you through the different areas where mass graves were found, explaining the different ways that people were executed. The whole tour finished with an audio recording of the propaganda that would loudly play over the speaker phones in that area, which had an incredible and lasting chilling effect on the tour.

The visit is a difficult one. As I said, it left me in tears. I don’t understand how we can treat one another so horrifically. However it is an important visit to make. Out of respect for the country and their past, but also out of respect for history. History needs to be studied and recounted so that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. Hopefully we can learn from this tragedy moving forward. If we can’t learn from this tragedy, then hopefully we can learn to respect the value of life.

Adventures

Chan’s Story

This is the story of Chan… One of the most amazing people I have ever met.

Chan has a beautiful round face that lights up when she laughs or smiles… Something she does quite often. Her shoulder-length hair is dark as liquorice and her deep brown eyes twinkle when she is happy. But behind that twinkle there is sorrow. A sorrow so deep it is constantly hiding under the surface of those beautiful brown eyes.

Chan sees her face like a pancake. she doesn’t realize how her laugh brings joy to those around her. She thinks her eyes look like poop and she wears a turtle neck under a button down, three pairs of pants, and a wide-brimmed straw hat to keep her honey almond skin from getting darker. She thinks she is too skinny and is constantly trying to put on weight to be more appealing to Cambodian standards but, all the weight goes to her face which she thinks makes her look even more like a pancake.

Chan is one of the hardest working individuals I have ever met. Never seeming to tire and putting all the boys to shame. She is a little energizer bunny, always giving 110% even under the sweltering hot Cambodian sun. She taught herself English and can chew threw sugar cane quicker than an elephant. She never takes vacations and gives her mother 100% of her earnings.

Her mother has one of the farms in the area surrounding the Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary. Every ten days, when Chan gets paid for her work at CWS she gives the entirety of her earnings to her mother so that she can buy whatever crops she needs for the farm. Chan keeps nothing of what she has earned for herself, nor does she even think about keeping any of it. Her mother needs it for the farm, so why wouldn’t she give her all of her wages? She is that selfless and that hard-working.

Chan’s mother is also very sick. Most likely from malnutrition although I never found out what with. Any extra time that Chan has, which is incredible that she even finds extra time considering she is always working at the sanctuary, she is helping her mother out.

Chan is truly one of the most beautiful people I have ever met – inside and out. But she is filled with insecurities and a sense of sorrow… A sorrow that seems to be constantly hiding behind those twinkling brown eyes.

She credits Lek, the lady who runs the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with saving her life. The Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary is one of ENP’s projects and, until CWS opened up, Chan wasn’t able to earn any money.

When the sanctuary first opened, Chan worked with some of the other girls in the kitchen, constantly eating the leftover food to try and gain weight.

But she was already suffering from a slew of stomach problems… Stomach problems that, in all likelihood, stemmed from serious malnutrition.

When Chan was younger, to curve the hunger pains, she would eat anything she could. Including dirt from the forest ground. Food, and nutritious food at that, wasn’t easy for her to come by.

Finally, after so many years of not eating properly, and consuming dirt to make herself feel full, her stomach had had enough. So she took some rice, went out to a hut in the jungle, and settled in for death to join her there.

Chan was dying. She had accepted her fate and went off to die in a way that wouldn’t bother anyone. Alone and in the jungle.

But Lek happened to be visiting that weekend and she noticed Chan’s absence. After asking around for her, she learned that Chan had, uncharacteristically, asked for time off. I imagine as well that Chan’s medical state would have been guessed at.

Lek wandered around the jungle looking for Chan and, somehow, found her in her little hut of death. I’m not sure how Lek found Chan, but she did. Upon seeing the condition that Chan was in, and where she had gone to have her final moments, Lek took her to a hospital and paid for all her medical bills.

Chan credits Lek with saving her life. From the story she tells about this time, Lek did save her life. And what a wonderful soul Lek saved.

While Chan’s story is one that I will never forget, it is her spirit that left a lasting impression on me.

Thank you, Lek, for finding Chan. And thank you, Chan, for being such an incredible person. You truly inspired me in the short amount of time that I got to know you.